


A sunny morning in Rome

by Ethel09



Category: White Collar
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-26
Updated: 2015-04-26
Packaged: 2018-03-25 20:37:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3824278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ethel09/pseuds/Ethel09
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Neal used to say that Kate had been his first love, but Maya was the love of his lifetime.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A sunny morning in Rome

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ayam](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ayam/gifts), [love2imagine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/love2imagine/gifts).



All the church bells of Rome were ringing on that glorious Sunday morning when Maya woke up.

She looked at the man lying at her side, basking in the sight of him. It was her first morning pleasure when she woke up before him. She knew he did the same, for many times she had met his gaze on her, full of joy and wonder, as she opened her eyes. She had long ceased to ask herself why that man with such an exceptional beauty, talent and cleverness had chosen her among all women on earth. She had ceased to wonder if Gabriel's birth had been the main motive in his decision to come to her.

She knew now that he loved and needed her as much as she needed and loved him.

They had both a scarred past. She had once been a reporter, until her boyfriend and occasional coworker had been killed while he was reporting from the field in Afghanistan. She had left everything behind her to own a little cafe in the middle of nowhere, and had let time heal her wounds.

When he had arrived in her island, the most handsome man she had ever seen, full of secrets, she had known his own wounds were still raw. She had been ready to love again, and incredibly attracted to him, but she had needed him to be more open with her. When he had tried, while wooing her with that playfulness, that incredible inventiveness of his, she hadn't resisted. And then he had been snatched from her, and she had sometimes thought that she'd never see him again.

And now he was hers, and she was his.

Sometimes though, the shadows of the past would visit him. Sometimes, more and more rarely, if in the middle of the night, he snuggled as close to her as he could, she knew he had dreamt of prison. She would take him in her arms, his head in the crook of her neck, and stroke his hair.

If in the morning his eyes were sad and haunted, she knew he had dreamt of Kate. She'd say nothing, she'd leave him some space. Later in the day, he would talk about her. He still felt a lot of guilt about her death.

They had talked about everything. She had told him about Alejandro, her first love, how they had met in a field reporting in Brazil, how they had lived together in Madrid, how she had learnt of his death coming to her newspaper office one morning, because he had no family, just her.

He had told her about all the ordeals of his past.

About his thefts and scams, he would talk sometimes with a laugh, when the trick had been particularly enjoyable, sometimes wistfully, because it had involved Kate, rarely with shame, except when it came to the end of his association with Keller.

About prison, at first he'd only said that he had been put in a rather safe place, that he had met nice guys both among the inmates and among the guards. That he had read, drawn, imagined a new escape plan every day. But soon enough, he had eventually confessed that he'd sometimes felt the walls of his cell closing on him, that the day when Kate could visit him seemed to never come, and the day of his release as far away as Judgment Day.

Maya shivered at the idea of Neal, the embodiment of freedom, being trapped in a concrete cell. She admired him all the more because he wanted to do his time, to have the possibility to start a new life with Kate. A dream brutally blown up in front of him with his beloved.

From what he said of Kate, Maya had made herself an idea of who she was. For Neal, everything that had gone wrong between them had been all his fault. But Maya thought she knew better. Kate had been a naive and immature girl, completely relying on Neal, but sometimes childishly jealous.  
Maya could forgive her that. Even if she trusted him completely, it was hard sometimes, when they arrived somewhere, to see all the women (and many men) in the room staring at him as if they wanted to take him from her here and now.

But she was not jealous of Kate. Neal used to say that Kate had been his first love, but she was the love of his lifetime.

He sometimes talked about Peter, as well. He wasn't blind to the man's flaws as he was to Kate's. Maya knew how deeply hurt and disappointed Neal had been when Peter had reproached him what he had done to save him from a murder conviction, and had told him that he'd always be a criminal.

"From that moment, I had two ways in front of me, Maya", he had once said. "I could believe him and follow my father's path. Or I could prove him wrong, and decide I wasn't only my father's son, that I was done with any kind of need for a father figure. I realized that Peter's interest in me wasn't always as selfless as I thought it was. And I began to resent him for not having helped me to save Kate as much as he could have, for having snatched me from you because of his blunder with the map. I'll always be grateful for some of the things he did for me, though", he had added thoughtfully. "But I had to get away from him, and from all my past."

"Just like I did", she had said.

"Only you didn't have to die officially and change your name to achieve that", he had replied with a wistful smile.

Why these sad or bittersweet memories on such a beautiful morning? Maya didn't know, but she didn't fight the urge to take him in her arms and hug him tightly, as if she could erase all the pains of his past and protect him from any hurt in the future by that very gesture. It was time anyway to wake him up if they wanted to have a moment for themselves, before the nanny would lead the children to them.

He woke up with a smile, and just whispered: "My favorite way of beginning a day!"

Then he captured her mouth, and that put an end for a while to any remembrance or any talk.

**Author's Note:**

> I think it's not fair that Peter ends up with a son and Neal doesn't even have a girlfriend at the end of the series. He always looked for true love. I decided that he should have it. Sara left him twice, to protect herself, and I don't think likely that he would go back to Alex. So I chose Maya.  
> I always liked Maya. She has character, and a strong will. She doesn't want a shallow relationship with someone who would hide his true self from her. But once she falls in love with Neal, she's fiercely loyal to him and highly concerned about his safety. She's the only one among his girlfriends who really put her physical safety on the line for him. Her rescue of Neal on her scooter was a great moment. It's easy to imagine her having problems with all these amateur bounty hunters after that. She faced Collins without fear, and she conned him like a pro.  
> And that moment on the beach, when Neal shows her his New York of sand, was just magic. He wooed her just as he probably had wooed Kate. I thought they could have a future together. I made of her a field journalist because she would have the audacity to settle with a man living under a false identity if she loved him. And that way she was learned enough to be a match for Neal.


End file.
